In the Mediterranean theatre when the Luftwaffe and Unitas where introduced the British lost 2 aircraft carriers, a few battleships, destroyer, carriers ect. I'm wondering will it be possible to beat a navy with air superiority or by using subs. (Subs being unlikely but wondering could a sub ever win)
Is it possible to beat British navy with planes and subs?
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Maybe against the ai but not against a player who know how to play the game well.
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With a strong air force I would assume so, at least when by beating you mean keeping them out of an area. You would however have to research and build naval bombers just for that purpose. With subs I'd say definitely not, as they are simply not designed to go toe-to-toe with a proper fleet and suffer horrible loses against even a relative small number of cheap destroyers.
Hmm. No, i don`t think so. You would inflict serious damage, possibly much more than you would suffer yourself. But to beat the enemy navy, i think you need some surface ships yourself.
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WW2 submarines are pretty poor against warships because:
- They are slow.
- Torpedoes have short range and are slow so they can be dodged by a aware enemy.
- The big targets tend to be protected by a screen of destroyers who can very well discover the submarines before they get to the target.
- The more submarines in an area the easier they are to discover, it is also hard to effectively coordinate many submarines.
- Submarines can be destroyed, disabled by pretty much anything, even close misses can destroy it.
- A detected submarine is pretty much dead, a single destroyer can destroy alot of submarines by itself.
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Well, if your fighters achieve air-supremacy in the MED or even Air-Superiority, this means your Naval Bombers can act without any penalties and can sink a few ships, but more importantly your planes become "force multipliers" in a naval combat.
Subs did sink a lot of Capital Ships in RL unfortunately so far, HOI mechanics is against the SUBS, so i guess subs on their own are useless except when doing convoy hunting.
On the other hand, a decent fleet backed by a strong air-force should be able to challenge and eventually destroy a strong fleet not supported by a strong air-force.
Subs did sink a lot of Capital Ships in RL unfortunately so far, HOI mechanics is against the SUBS, so i guess subs on their own are useless except when doing convoy hunting.
On the other hand, a decent fleet backed by a strong air-force should be able to challenge and eventually destroy a strong fleet not supported by a strong air-force.
I'd say no for now. The British navy is massive even at the start of the game. I think it's navy was the largest in the word ever since Trafalgar in the Napoleonic Wars. If the AI researches AA and AS warfare they will sink or shoot down more planes and subs than you can produce. So don't count on destroying the British navy.
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Until the Americans decided to get into the game. Now we've had the largest fleet in the world since then.
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http://www.globalfirepower.com/navy-ships.asp
Maybe in firepower but not in numbers. According to the GFP China and yes, North Korea, have "larger" navies. But it's China and North Korea so they are probably lying or just have a bunch of pontoon boats.
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It's a new era today,, China's carrier killer missiles(single missile that can take down a carrier) means you are on the very very bad odds.. Now some smart ass will say oh we have anti missile defense system but those systems by nature never promises 100% protection and when only thing you need is a single hit, now you are on very very bad odds.. China is strong that it doesn't have capital problems like US.. See the latest generation destroyers of US, first planned 200 then reduce to 50 then only 3 could be produced.. I'm not even talking about the f-35 disaster which currently even gets outperformed by an f-16..
Just wanted to say that when you say pontoon boats you underestimate with ignorance (no offense, not knowing is not shame,yet not learning is)
Just wanted to say that when you say pontoon boats you underestimate with ignorance (no offense, not knowing is not shame,yet not learning is)
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I think the answer to this, based on what we've seen so far, is what you mean by 'beat'.
- If you mean sink ships then probably not consistently.
- If you mean attain naval superiority in a specific region(s) then possibly.
How effective that strategy is though would be dependent the strength of naval bombers which I don't think we've seen these in action yet.
I have to say that is probably not an accurate source. The DPRK is given a strength rating of 967, while maintaining no CVs, no DDs, only 3 FF/FFGs, 2 corvettes, 70 subs and 211 coastal patrol craft; whereas the US is given 415 strength rating with 19 CVs, 6 frigates, 62 DDs, 75 subs and 13 coastal defense craft. China is given the second most at 714, with only 1 CV, 48 FF/FFGs, 32 DDs, 68 subs, 26 corvettes, and 138 coastal patrol craft.
I don't know who put together that site, but their estimations are completely off. Firstly, because the destroyers count is off by 1 (Zumwalt), they don't account for 22 CGs, and they count the LCS as a frigate (which is not, really, more of an oversized coastal patrol craft).
Anyways, I doubt that anyone is challenging the point that the US had the largest fleet in World War II.
ALSO, as to the carrier killer missiles... those aren't 100% either. First, you have to find the carrier; then you have to hit the carrier; then you have to actually hit it hard enough or often enough to sink it.
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I think this depends greatly on what year you're talking about. In 1939, British escorts were relatively abysmal. They had comparably poor training for destroying submarines. They would only depth charge and attack until whatever they were escorting had moved out of the area; then the escorts would hurry off after them.
- You are right that, once submerged, submarines were notoriously slow, but this did not stop them from having at least a few opportunistic successes against capital ships. Ark Royal is probably the best noted, but Nelson also suffered severe damage in a submarine-placed mine. A number of U-boat attacks on capital ships between 1939 and late 1940 failed not because of an effective escort screen, but because their torpedoes were remarkably faulty and would fail to trigger properly. Very late war U-boats, like the Type XXI, which was delayed by over six months from deployment by Allied strategic bombing, were much faster than the Type VII and Type IX forebears. They could have moved at a faster speed while remaining quiet and have sprinted while submerged at about 17kts (the VIIs and IXs could muster ~7-8kts submerged).
- For torpedoes having a short range, depending on the variety, electric torpedoes could make about 5-7.5km at 30-20kts, respectively. The steam powered G7a could reach 14km at 30kts or 8km at 40kts. I think you might have the notions reversed. If a U-boat is attacking a warship that was aware it was being attacked, the U-boat captain has probably made a big mistake. Fast escorts could at least equal those slower torpedo speeds and zig-zagging was a fairly effective means to avoid torpedo attacks. What was important was to launch attacks prior to being detected. Then, ships tended to move along predictable paths and at slower speeds. Also, attacking at closer ranges, rather than the extreme 14km, would make it easier to ensure a hit (or multiple hits) on a target.
- If the U-boat was doing its job properly, they would position themselves kilometers ahead of a warship, not go dashing in on the surface (for being visible) or sprinting submerged (not fast enough and incredibly noisy). The difficulty with this was that warship groups tended to move fairly fast, usually too fast for U-boats to get ahead of. Most of the big capital ships sunk were targets of opportunity, where the U-boats found themselves already in a favorable position.
- You are very correct that it was hard to coordinate multiple submarines. Wolfpacks were generally focused by BDU back in Europe. Deciding exactly when to attack was difficult. However, part of the rationale was that if the escorts were off busily bombing someone on one side of the convoy, they would likely denude other areas, making it easier for the other boats to capitalize on the moment. Hearing the depth charging would be easy from anywhere around. As the war progressed and Allied methods improved, the more regularly had radio direction finding to warn them from the broadcasts of those U-boats in their area.
- Submarines were actually fairly hard to kill, as shown by the relatively low losses before May 1943. Depth charges had to detonate within just a few meters of the hull to cause serious damage. They were also hard to aim because of the method in which they were deployed: rolled off the back of a racing escort (so as to not blow themselves up) or launched sideways. This meant that the hunting escort needed to drive over the U-boat, losing them in their ASDIC's blindspot The much better hedgehog weapons were forward-launched, meaning they could be more accurately place. Hedgehogs also only detonated when they made contact with the submarine's hull, setting off a much smaller but sufficient charge to likely sink the boat outright but also not obliterate the escort overhead.
- Whether a detected submarine was doomed all depended on the year. Prior to 1943, escorts tended to try to achieve suppression of detected U-boats. They would generally depth charge the area, trying to keep them submerged and deep, so they couldn't counter attack before the convoy or their battlegroup had skedaddled by and out of the U-boat's range. U-boat losses for most of the early and mid war were of about 10% per month of boats at sea. Late war sonar, radar direction finding, and HF/DF accuracy was very effective, as were their improved weapons and tactics, which was what drove U-boat losses to around 90% of those at sea per month.
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I think if you have enough land based NAV you'll definintly make certain Sea area's a no-go or at least painful if you have Air Superiority and your techs are up to date, Sub's will need variants that increase certain stat's but unless you have a mass of them it's not going to work very well because they are not meant to control sea lanes at least in their early1940's form but to interdict trade. They just couldn't stay submerged long enough nor did they have the speed to outrun escorts especially once equipped with active sonar and running as a hunter killer group.
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When measuring navies, comparing raw boat numbers s prone to be extremely misleading because more boats does not a stronger navy make.
10 super carriers and hundred destroyers pose a significantly more deadly force than a thousand destroyers.
10 super carriers and hundred destroyers pose a significantly more deadly force than a thousand destroyers.
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I generally agree. This was borne out by with Donitz's insistence on a submarine force of 300+ U-boats, which, once he had it, failed to achieve its goals due to the technological disparity that had developed.
Although...out numbering your opponent 10:1 isn't a bad start.
You are misjudging Donitz's request.
He wanted 300+ submarines at the start of hostilities so he could scour the sea lanes on day 1. The technological disparity aside, Donitz knew that the longer Britain had open sea lanes, the stronger she got. Even without the technological disparity, if the Germans had 300 submarines on patrol by 1943, then the golden window for screwing the British economically has somewhat passed. It takes time to destroy merchant shipping; if you take too long, the enemy can put enough escorts into the water to become insurmountable because they can afford to do so since you didn't wipe out their merchant marine in the first 18 months.
While submarines would not have won the war for Germany historically (she was more or less screwed the moment she invaded Poland), having 300 submarines in place in 1939 to start convoy raiding would have forced the British to devote far more resources to things like destroyers and frigates throughout 1936-1939 (there is no way Germany could build 300 submarines without the British knowing), weakening her position versus Italy and Japan. And while the British were working out the doctrines and technology for defeating WWII era submarines, the Germans would have 300 submarines out killing convoys, not a small trickle of them.
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With subs and aircraft you can perhaps not wipe out a navy, but you can most likely hurt it badly and you can deny access to both ports and areas of sea. The game does not have mines, but in RL you could in theory use subs to drop loads of mines outside strategic ports, making it hazardous for enemy ships to move out and in of their own ports.
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The 300 U-boat figure was to allow at any one time ~100 to be in base resupplying and refitting, ~100 moving to and from their patrol areas, and ~100 actually on station, searching and engaging. It was possible for Germany to have fielded a higher fraction than one-third of their boats versus the numbers they actually had and they did, at least at times. In August 1942, Germany had 100 boats at sea for the first time and they kept that tempo up until Black May. At that point they had reached a peak of ~160 at sea right at April/May 1943.
Had the government outside of the U-boat branch wanted, Germany could have legally built an equal number of submarines with Britain. This would have given them 60 U-boats. Instead, they had 26 in September 1939.
Even after the war, Donitz was convinced that all he needed were more boats. It wasn't until decades after, when Britain was declassifying its WWII naval secrets, that he learned about the compromises to Enigma and how effective HF/DF had been.
My source for numbers:
http://uboat.net/ops/combat_strength.html
Chinese Missile system = Propaganda Missiles
Modern Military's don't care much for advancement in the Space arts and anything China's doing is roughly 20 years old.
SECONDLY. My question is at what point should a sub become a threat to a naval fleet? It's enough of a threat to sink a carrier...(Not showing as a example of reliability) At what point does a submarine become reliable enough to start sinking the many things. I know in my current game that's going smashing I'm going to have around a year ahead subs the entire time with my leadership. At what point will it be viable?
Modern Military's don't care much for advancement in the Space arts and anything China's doing is roughly 20 years old.
SECONDLY. My question is at what point should a sub become a threat to a naval fleet? It's enough of a threat to sink a carrier...(Not showing as a example of reliability) At what point does a submarine become reliable enough to start sinking the many things. I know in my current game that's going smashing I'm going to have around a year ahead subs the entire time with my leadership. At what point will it be viable?
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